Smart Trek
by EgotisticalIndustries
Summary: In canon star trek, there were several technologies available that could utterly demolish the status quo, but wound up pidgeon-holed and never exploited to their full potential. Also, there will be no reality warpers or deus-ex-machina asspulls. Finally, I've cured the Federation of their idiotic ship design, and everyone will generally act intelligently in most cases. HIATUS!
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is a star trek AU, in which the Federation actually applies their technology INTELLIGENTLY. This is likely to lead to hilarious game-breakers, at least until everyone else starts copying them. Please note that I'll be slightly more hard science than canon trek.

Also, there is no Q continuum. There are no Q. There are no reality warpers or psychic powers of any sort that I can't explain (that will be relevant to this fic at least...), and there will be no Deus Ex Machina asspull techs-of-the-week. Also, 1st contact was both delayed, and somewhat different from canon...

* * *

The development of replicators (takes place roughly 80 years ahead of schedule, in the 2120s.)

* * *

"So, you created a machine that can convert matter into energy and back again, and you wanted to use it for personal manufacturing!?"

"Pretty much."

"And it failed to occur to you, that you just made antimatter obsolete AND also created something that could make the H-bomb look like a firecracker?"

"Wait, what!?"

"1 kilogram of mass, converted to energy, yields a bit more than 8.3 petajoules."

"Oh."

* * *

Later, during the design phase of the Enterprise...

* * *

"So, why is this ship so horribly designed?"

"We thought it looked cool..."

"OK, no. You know how in old sci-fi shows all the human ships looked like bricks in space?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"THERE WAS A REASON FOR THAT! Having it all in 1 block reduces the amount of work the structural integrity fields need to do, it allows you to put more armor on, which is useful for making the ship survive longer, ESPECIALLY if you take into account the aforementioned structural integrity fields. Also, it allows for retractable warp nacelles, so you're less likely to lose them in combat, this goes double if you can fit them into an armored recess. All in all, there's a VERY GOOD REASON for star-ships to look like bricks."

"Oh, what do you think of the warp core?"

"One question?"

"Certainly."

"Why does this still use antimatter given the new mass/energy conversion reactors, which are both safer and cheaper to run?"

"Uhh..."

"We're done here, you're all fired and I'm replacing you with COMPETENT engineers."

* * *

Some time later, during the design of the weapons systems for the Enterprise

* * *

"What's this... photon torpedo thing?"

"it's a missile with a 1.5 kg lump of antimatter in its warhead and a reaction-less drive."

"Why is it still using antimatter when a conversion bomb would both deliver more energy and be safer to store, in addition to being cheaper?"

"uhh..."

"Anyway, you might keep your job if I approve of what you came up with for the gun-type weapons."

"Well, it's a type of particle beam..."

"go on."

"The particles fired cause atomic nuclei to decay into neutrinos in a limited chain reaction."

"May I inquire about any limitations?"

"Um... it doesn't do as well against elements with a high atomic number, especially if they're metals. It also has a rather long range of 300 km"

"you mean like what armor plating is likely to be made from? And a range that is utterly insignificant in space in terms of even the distance between Earth and its moon Luna?"

"yes..."

"You're fired. HEY! HOPEFULLY COMPETENT NEW GUY!"

"Yes, reporting for duty!"

"You are familiar with the problem that electromagnetic beam weaponry is sub-optimal at defeating shields, correct?"

"Yes."

"Are you also familiar with the brute force method of problem solving?"

"Also yes."

"Make a mass/energy conversion unit that takes 100 kg of matter per shot, turns it into energy, and focuses it into a coherent beam."

"Certainly, may I ask why we're designing a weapon with a yield of 2 gigatons and an effective range of well over 8 light seconds?"

"Because, there is no kill... like overkill. And besides, those conversion torpedoes are in the triple-digit gigaton range."

* * *

The unveiling of the NX-01 Enterprise (2152)

* * *

John Archer was blissfully unaware of the arguments that had gone on for almost a month in the design process of his fabulous new ship. It was capable of a good 2,000 c, which could be kept up for about a month. That was without the mass scoops fitted, with them it could fuel its mass/energy conversion reactor indefinitely on the faint wisps of hydrogen found in interstellar space, and that would also allow the replicators to run and feed the crew. In terms of shape, it was best described as a 300 meter long rifle bullet 80 meters in diameter with engines at the back. All exterior systems, be they conversion beam cannons, torpedo launch railguns, mass scoops, or warp nacelles were hidden under a retractable armored sheath when not in use. The bridge was also sensibly buried somewhere deep inside the ship, and its only exposure to space was by remotely operated sensors.

Speaking of armor, that stuff was a titanium/tungsten alloy laced with carbon nanotubes layered between plates of Boron Carbide and was about 15 meters thick in most places. This led to extremely high tensile and yield strength in addition to a decent ability to absorb heat. This was only increased by the intense structural integrity fields projected onto it, and there was an additional system in place to deal with damage. The additional system was a large system of replicators which would take matter from the fuel tank, and layer it on as new armor plating at the site of damage, effectively repairing damaged armor almost instantly as long as there was fuel available.

In terms of armament, the Conversion Beams hit with about 2 gigatons of TNT worth of energy, which would barely be able to defeat the armor and intensely multi-layered shields of the Enterprise in a single shot before proceeding to cause manageable damage. The Conversion torpedoes were each roughly 12 tons, 8 of which were converted to energy upon detonation, granting them a yield of 160 gigatons. The Beams had an effective range of roughly 12 light seconds. The Torpedoes had roughly 50,000 km/s of delta v with an acceleration of roughly 200 km/s/s, not counting the 1,400 km/s kick they got from the mass-lightened railgun that assisted them on launch. Compared to those idiotic phase cannons and photon torpedoes, this ship could engage at quite bluntly ludicrous ranges.

The Earth-Derived republic had severely over-estimated the technological competency of the vast majority of the galaxy. This was shown as a group of 18 Klingon Birds-Of-Prey exited warp 8,000 km above Earth, and demanded that the fledgling species surrender. They had apparently failed to notice the orbital star-ship factory over Luna, with 1 completed NX-class starship and 20 more in various stages of construction. The Enterprise had 16 Conversion Beams arranged in 2 rings of 8 at different points on the hull and 4 Railgun Assisted Torpedo turrets. This resulted in 8 Birds-Of-Prey suffering from a sudden case of vaporization, while the mass cartridges for the conversion beams reloaded, the remaining Birds-Of-Prey frantically searched for the ship that had one-shotted 8 of their number _with a photon beam__, which should have reflected harmlessly off their shields_. They went to warp 2, and exited warp within visual range of the Enterprise.

Please bear in mind, this had all taken place within 6 seconds of the first salvo being fired. As the remaining 8 Birds-Of-Prey fired disruptors, they were absorbed by this nightmare-ship's 12-layer shields. Then the Enterprise finished reloading. 7 of the remaining Birds-Of-Prey received a full-energy blast, leading to their destruction. The last ship was merely crippled however, as United Humanity wanted prisoners. More importantly however, Humanity wanted answers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **This chapter takes place 1 month after the launching of the Enterprise, which happened on February 12, 2151 in this timeline. Well, most of the chapter, first is some of the prisoners being... _persuaded. _During the time-skip, the 12 Luna-Orbiting ship factories, the 20 Earth-Orbiting ones, and the 35 in the asteroid belt cranked out... 1,005 starships... WELL! LETS GO STOMP SOME KLINGONS! (And THAT is the benefit of using an assembly line style of manufacturing rather than conventional shipyards) BTW: the reasoning behind Earth's first class of starship being a warship, and cranked out in such absurd numbers is because the humans decided that they'd rather risk overestimating the general hostility of the universe than underestimating it.

Also, this chapter has a Mass Effect reference, because why not?

* * *

"You are under the observation of an extremely high-resolution brain scanner, we will know if you are lying, now tell us... WHERE IS YOUR HOMEWORLD!?"

"Up my A**!"

_**ZAP!**_

"We forgot to mention, we have a computer hooked up that's capable of artificially firing all your pain receptors without any chance of accidentally killing you. You will break... be it sooner or... _**later**_."

"**** you!"

_**ZAP!**_

"Do we need to do that again?"

"I'll never talk!"

"This is your last chance to tell us before we just try and dissect your brain to figure it out that way."

"Still not talking."

"Take him away, NEXT!"

"You are under the observation of an extremely high-resolution brain scanner, we will know if you are lying, now tell us... WHERE IS YOUR HOMEWORLD!?"

* * *

some time later...

* * *

"In other news, one of them finally told us where their home-world is."

"Oh, where is it?"

"In terms of galactic distances, right on our doorstep. It's just 90 light-years anti-spinwards with a bit of corewards and 'up' mixed in."

"At 2,000 c that's just 16.44 days away."

"We've also established contact with what's left of that sleeper-ship colony we sent to Alpha Centauri 20 years ago."

"How many survivors?"

"Of the original half a million we sent there? 23,000. And they only lasted this long due to cybernetic augmentation to the point that they could easily be mistaken for service androids."

"Ouch."

"Yes, it indeed sucks to be them."

"Now, on that note, on to colonization policy."

"Well, everyone wants to live on a class M planet, that's something of a given. The problem is, those are in somewhat limited supply."

"True, perhaps terraforming could be used?"

"Actually, I was referring to the fact that there are lots of systems with usable resources, but no planets suitable for terraforming. Just sending a few automated mining platforms with some extra automated factories to those could easily remove the vast majority of our resource worries."

"On that note, we could start building large-scale space habitats, like Bishop Rings."

"That would easily remove most of the demand for Class M planets, and also allow us to support a bigger population and industrial base."

"Why do we even need planets anymore? From the way you two are making it sound we could plop one of those Bishop Rings in interstellar space, and as long as it had fuel for its reactor everyone would be fine."

"You know, that is a very good point. We could even put them around rogue planets and have a network of 'shadow colonies' that would be extremely unlikely to suffer an attack."

* * *

The invasion of Qo'nos

* * *

Roughly 285 NX-class warships exited warp at the edge of the Qo'nos system, the Klingon defense fleet of their home-world numbered roughly 1,200 ships. The humans, not wanting to deal with the Klingons head-on, warped to roughly 1 light-hour out,fired torpedoes, and retreated to 1 light week. 285*4=1,140 torpedoes fired. Given the 160 gigaton yield of each torpedo, this led to each torpedo being a 1 hit kill after their 8-hour cruise. As the 60 remaining Klingon ships desperately tried to figure out what had happened, the 285 human warships closed to what THEY thought of as a normal engagement range of 5 light-seconds. Given the fact that a Conversion Beam was already confirmed to one-shot Klingon ships, the humans winning this engagement was somewhat predictable.

* * *

Ground-side operations

* * *

Jennifer Shepard was leading a squad on a "smash and grab" mission to attempt to retrieve information on Klingon worlds besides Qo'nos. They were dropping in using one of the new "Doomsday" IFVs, which were more-or-less immune to small arms and light anti-tank fire, and were generally awesome (though they did only convert 3 milligrams of matter per shot in its conversion beam, with a yield equivalent to 60 tons of TNT). As they touched down, the Doomsday accelerated to 120 km/h and started moving towards what was _apparently_ the capitol building of the entire Klingon Empire.

As the Doomsday activated its jump-jets and slammed through an upper-story window, Shepard and her 8-soldier team got ready to exit the vehicle. As the Doomsday came to a complete stop, the team exited through the back-hatch and began their rampage through the building. A thick security door was blasted through easily by a few milliseconds of sustained fire from conversion beam carbines. The 12 Klingon security personnel behind it opened fire with phase pistols, but those were easily absorbed by the heavy powered armor Shepard's team was wearing. Given the massive quality advantage in terms of equipment, Shepard's team wiped out the Klingon security team without much difficulty.

Things got a bit more difficult as the next group was equipped with phase rifles and taking potshots from behind a corner. However, this was easily solved by a conversion/hypersonic fragment grenade (nicknamed the 'bouncy ball of doom' by the soldiers that used it). Said grenade converted 5 micrograms of matter into energy, which would be equal to roughly 100 kg of TNT. This was sufficient to both destroy the group of Klingons to the point that any hope of identification was lost, and blow a rather large hole in the nearby walls, floor, and ceiling. Shepard's team accessed the map of the place that had been made using x-ray scans from orbit, which revealed that to reach the situation room they wanted to go down. Doing so, they landed right in the middle of a large group of Klingon warriors.

The ensuing storm of phase fire resulted in 2 injuries and a fatality on Shepard's team, but at the end of the day the 18 Klingons went down. The wounded could still fight due to the exoskeleton and auto-med systems of their armor, so they continued on. One last door went down to conversion beam fire and Shepard's team was in the situation room. Everyone who looked important was knocked out using tranquilizer darts, everyone else received a conversion beam to the face, and any devices that looked like they might have important data were crammed in a backpack. Now came the hard part, extraction.

Shepard sent her golf ball-sized camera drone out into the hallway, where it spotted a group of 39 Klingon warriors coming their way. Shepard didn't want to deal with this, and responded with another 'bouncy ball'. The remaining 8 members of Shepard's team (with 4 comatose Klingons slung over various shoulders) used their wrist grapplers to ascend the impromptu vertical shaft they had created. Another 5 security personnel were killed in a storm of conversion beam fire. As they dashed for the Doomsday, they ran into an obstacle they had created earlier. Namely the hole in the floor from the first 'bouncy ball'.

That was when a group of 16 Klingon warriors managed to sneak up behind Shepard's team, and cause another fatality and 3 more injuries before they got annihilated. This time the fatality was Shepard. Still, the remaining squad members managed to successfully extract, Klingon leaders and intelligence in tow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **You know how there was time travel in star trek? In this fic, the first thing the humans will do with it is go back to... lets put it at 2120 and update that era's tech to their current specifications. They will repeat this cycle as many times as they feel like it, effectively cramming an infinite amount of technological development into 150 years. Also, time loop computers. Yeah, time travel is pretty much the ultimate game-breaker if you apply it intelligently. Therefore, I will not be including time travel, as it wrecks all hope of suspense if applied intelligently. Another 4 months have passed.

Now, the Star Trek universe doesn't have a Codex, but that won't stop me from putting down some in-universe entries on human tech (from the human POV, the other races won't have any idea what they're dealing with for quite some time).

In other news, I want a bouncy ball.

Some of you may be wondering if any of the antagonists will stand a chance, please remember that once you have replicators Conversion is RIDICULOUSLY easy to get (provided you can actually start investigating the implications of the tech you use). And from there, Conversion WEAPONS are just a few terrorists hacking a Conversion reactor away.

Also, I promise to do a second chapter today with some actual story rather than just a massive infodump.

* * *

**Human Technologies**

**Category: General**

**Conversion:** The conversion beam is partially a result of someone taking a look at the mass/energy conversion function of replicators and transporters, and realizing "this has other uses". When used for power, it renders dangerous and expensive antimatter unneeded, while also being able to use ANYTHING as fuel (note that this does not include exotic matter). However, when a large amount of matter is converted to energy and that energy is directed at a target, you get the destructive conversion beam. When undirected, you get the utterly devastating conversion bomb.

**Category: Weapons**

**Conversion Beams: **As mentioned under conversion, directing the energy released by conversion into a beam results in a quite powerful weapon. The United Humanity Combat Force (UHCF) currently deploys 8 varieties of Conversion Beam, with 1 more existing as a thought exercise.

**-Conversion Pistol: **This weapon is the standard sidearm used by UHCF personnel. It has a 2-stage safety in addition to being gene-locked, if handled by unauthorized personnel it will not fire. If opened without going through a 5-step process and passing the gene-lock it will self-destruct as if it were the victim of 15 kilograms of TNT to prevent reverse engineering. For ammunition it has a 100 gram block of iridium inserted into the grip, much like a ballistic sidearm has its clip located in the grip. Every time the weapon is fired, 250 nanograms of this Iridium is converted to energy. This delivers energy roughly equivalent to 5 kilograms of TNT, while also allowing the weapon to fire roughly 400,000,000 times between reloads. As the weapon will only fire 8 times per second at full auto, there was no apparent reason why the ability to reload would be needed, as the weapon would surely break from regular wear-and-tear before it would need to reload. But it can still reload anyways, and it is standard practice to carry 2 backup iridium ammo blocks.

**-Conversion Carbine:** This weapon is standard issue for UHCF ground forces. It has security and safety measures identical to the pistol. The weapon totals at 65 centimeters in length, 20 of which are its stock. It resembles an old assault rifle from the early 21st century (more specifically, a mash-up of the M-4 carbine and AK-47). The Iridium block in this weapon masses at 1.2 kilograms, and 1 microgram of matter is converted with each shot. This means that it delivers energy equal to 20 kg of TNT, and it can fire 12 times per second. In total, the weapon can fire 1,200,000,000 times before needing to reload, running into much the same problem as the pistol. That would be if you didn't use its alternate fire modes.

On secondary fire (AKA, grenade mode), the Conversion Carbine simply ups the amount of matter converted to roughly 50 micrograms, delivering energy equivalent to 1 ton of TNT per shot, and firing 5 times per second. On Tertiary fire (AKA tranq mode), The Conversion Carbine takes mass from its ammo block, which is fed to a replicator connected to a grenade-launcher type device below the beam projector. The 10 grams of mass used for this are used to replicate a tranquilizer dart fitted with an iridium tip and filled with an extremely fast-acting paralytic agent that can incapacitate an average humanoid in roughly 8 seconds, and keeps them that way for roughly half an hour. The tranquilizer dart is typically fired at roughly 30 meters per second. The standard firing mode for a Conversion Carbine has an effective range of roughly 560 meters, the Grenade mode has an effective range of 1.2 km, and the Tranq mode has an effective range of 50 meters.

**-Heavy Personal Conversion Beam:** This shoulder-fired weapon takes inspiration from the 'bazooka' of world war 2 fame. For ammunition it uses an iridium cylinder with a mass of 2 kilograms. When fired, it converts 1 milligram of matter, delivering energy equivalent to roughly 20 tons of TNT. It has a cyclic rate of 6 shots per second, and an effective range of 2.3 km. Worth noting is that the HPCB does in fact have a secondary fire mode, in which it is roughly equivalent to the primary fire mode of a Conversion Carbine, and is intended for if the enemy gets too close for the primary fire to be used safely.

**-Conversion Autocannon****: **This weapon is used as the main armament of the Doomsday IFV. It uses a 12 kg iridium block for ammunition, of which 3 milligrams are converted to energy with each shot. This leads to a yield equivalent to 60 tons of TNT. The Conversion Autocannon has a cyclic rate of 10 shots per second, and an effective range of 13.5 km in atmosphere (effective range is 1,800 km in vacuum).

**-Conversion Cannon: **This is the heaviest Conversion Beam to utilize an iridium block rather than a Mass Cartridge system as is found in ship-mouted Conversion Beams. It carries a 20 kg iridium block, from which UP TO 50 milligrams are converted with each shot. This means each shot can have a yield of up to 1 kiloton, and the Conversion Cannon can fire up to 20 times per second. The Conversion Cannon has an effective range of 28.9 km in atmosphere, and an effective range of 16,280 km in vacuum.

**-PD Converter:** This device is a turret roughly 2 meters in diameter designed to shoot down incoming missiles. It is powered by a belt-feed Mass Cartridge system with each cartridge massing at roughly 2.5 kg, meaning each shot has a yield of 50 megatons. The PD Converter was deliberately designed to project a less cohesive beam than other Conversion Beams, meaning it projects a 'cone' with a roughly 0.01 degree angle. This was done to increase the chances of a hit on an incoming missile, despite it, the PD Converter still manages to have an effective range of 90,000 km. The PD Converter has a cyclic rate of roughly 54 shots per second, due to being designed around the old GAU-8A Avenger autocannon.

**-Ship To Ship Converter:** This weapon is the primary engagement tool used by the UHCF space arm. It is a fairly standard Conversion Beam, save that it has a Mass Cartridge of a hefty 100 kg. This grants the STS Converter a yield of 2 gigatons, which is sufficient to one-shot any known class of Klingon ship. The STS Converter also has an effective range of 12 light seconds, primarily limited by light-lag prediction algorithms. Notably, reloading the STS converter manually takes 8-10 seconds, but the new auto-loaders have reduced this to roughly 0.3 seconds.

**-Heavy STS Converter: **This up-scaled weapon is not found on the standard NX class warships. The Mass Cartridge for this nightmarish device has a mass of 25 tons, granting it a yield of 500 gigatons. Despite this, it has the same effective range against mobile targets as the STS Converter (again due to light lag). When fired against an immobile target like a planet however, the effective range of the weapon increases to 3 light minutes. The longer reload time of 5 seconds, combined with the STS converter performing almost identically against enemy vessels, sees this primarily used as a bombardment weapon.

**-Planet Buster (theoretical):** The Gravitational Binding Energy of Earth is 2.24+E32 joules. So let's say that to reliably pop a planet, 5+E32 joules of energy is needed. A gigaton (1 billion tons) of matter has a bit over 8.3+E24 joules of energy. That means that to reach 5+E32 joules of energy roughly 602.41 petatons (a petaton is 1 quadrillion tons) of matter would need to be converted into energy. If the ammunition were iridium, this would require roughly 13.6 cubic megameters of volume for the Mass Cartridge, a small planet in and of itself. The only practical substance for this would be stabilized degenerate matter (preferably quark matter, though strange matter may also work), which could achieve Mass Cartridge sizes of only a few cubic meters. The main problem with that, is that if (electron or neutron) Degenerate Matter is not kept under absolutely insane pressures, it tends to... pop for lack of a more appropriate term. Therefore it is advised to use an artificial gravitational singularity or some strangelets for demolishing unwanted planets, should such a thing ever become necessary.

**Conversion Bombs:** A Conversion Beam is a fairly good weapons system, but they only convert a tiny amount of their mass into energy with each shot, and have problems engaging at ranges greater than a few light seconds or dealing with targets past the horizon. The solution to this is the Conversion Bomb.

**-M7 Conversion/Hypersonic Fragment grenade (AKA 'Bouncy Balls' or 'The Bouncy Ball of doom'):** This standard-issue grenade is designed to flush enemy troops out of cover or act as a tactical demolition charge. It is a sphere roughly 6 centimeters in diameter. The innermost cm of diameter contains the actual conversion device, which has a variable yield of 35 kg to 3 tons of TNT. The outermost layer, which is roughly 1 cm thick is a rubberized material which allows the grenade to bounce with roughly 68% efficiency. The gap between the rubberized layer and the conversion device is filled with 1mm ball bearings.

A 'Bouncy Ball' has 3 detonator modes, namely "bounce", "impact" and "nuke". The detonator mode is chosen via a dial, the handle of which is removed to arm the grenade. In "bounce" mode, the grenade is programmed to bounce twice before detonating on the next impact after that with energy equal to 35 kg of TNT. The bouncing is to allow the grenade to be bounced behind an enemy's cover by a soldier. In "impact" mode, The 'Bouncy Ball' simply initiates on impact with energy equivalent to 100 kg of TNT. This mode leads to quite severe structural damage if used indoors, and it has been considered whether to re-classify the M7 as a demolition ordnance. Nuke mode is command detonated from the soldier's suit or cybershell, and for good reason, as it releases energy equivalent to 3 tons of TNT.

**-Tactical Conversion Ordnance: **This small ground-to-ground or air-to-ground missile is only around 20 centimeters in length, and is best described as a cylinder with a spike on one end in terms of appearance. Despite this, the TCO can reach mach 28 in atmosphere, and can hit anywhere on a planet from anywhere on or above said planet. The warhead of a TCO has a variable yield anywhere from 100 tons to 650 megatons of TNT.

**-STS Conversion Torpedo****: **This weapons system is a torpedo with a launch mass of 12 tons, 8 of which are designated for the warhead. During launch the STSCT typically has an assist of 1,400 km/s from a mass-lightening railgun (on an NX class, the Overzealous versions supply a 3,200 km/s kick) to assist its own 50,000 km/s of delta v. On impact, the 8 tons of iridium in the warhead are converted into energy, leading to a yield of 160 gigatons of TNT. The torpedo is typically only deployed either within 8,000 km of the target ship, or from an arbitrarily long distance, as the STS Converters can handle everything within a few light seconds under most circumstances, and it takes STSCTs a LONG time to reach their targets outside of 'knife-fight' ranges.

**-Interstellar Bombardment Torpedo: **The IBT is a warp-capable missile 35 meters in length and 8 meters in diameter (not counting warp nacelles or mass scoops, which are retractable). When fired, the IBT goes to warp (reaching 1,200 c) and more-or-less slams into the target planet (or ship, if you're fond of overkill) before converting roughly 8,000 tons of iridium into energy, resulting in an explosive yield equivalent to 160 petatons of TNT. This weapon could be accurately summed up as the galactic-scale equivalent to the nuclear ICBM.

**Category: Defenses**

**Armor Composite 194:** This material is composed of a titanium/tungsten alloy laced with carbon nanotubes, and layered between plates of Boron Carbide. It is reinforced with an extremely intense Structural Integrity Field, which is powered directly by millimeter-scale conversion reactors and folded in an extremely complicated manner to make it more resilient.

**Compartmentalized Layered Shields:** This isn't so much a technology in and of itself, as a more efficient way of applying an existing technology. Namely force-fields. In the CLS technique, the hull is divided into 'sections' roughly 5*5 meters across (for ships, smaller units have smaller sections). Each section has its own redundant shield generators, meaning that even if one fails, the others are still intact. The layered part comes in as each section doesn't just project a single layer of force-field, but several stacked on top of each other, meaning that to get all the way through to the armor layer a shot has to slam through multiple layers of shield on the way down. The sectioned and multi-layer design also means that a shield-free 'corridor' can be briefly opened for outbound shots without the ship having an exploitable shield frequency to bypass their shields.

**Category: Misc. Soldier Equipment**

**PCR-5 Revenant Combat Armor System:** The PCR-5 is standard issue combat armor for all UHCF ground and security personnel. For defenses it has 3 centimeters of Armor Composite 194 and a 3-layer CLS system. It is fully sealed, and serviceable as an EVA suit. The powered exoskeleton allows the soldier to function in up to 12 gs while carrying an additional 500 kg of equipment. The last mark of PCR armor used a wrist-mounted grappling hook to provide vertical mobility, but the current version uses a set of conversion-based jump jets. The HUD comes with thermal, night-vision, and exographic vision modes.

But, the feature that really defines the Revenant is its extremely comprehensive auto-med system, which uses gases in the nearby atmosphere (or from the iridium fuel block if that isn't available) as replicator mass to repair (or outright replace) damaged organs if the soldier is wounded. This process still takes anywhere from 3 seconds to 1.4 minutes depending on the extent of the damage, which often results in an apparently dead soldier getting back up and proceeding to wreak havoc behind enemy lines. There is an entirely robotic variant available for soldiers who chose to upload or extract.

**Camera Drones:** This is quite bluntly just a webcam connected to a tiny impulse drive and conversion reactor that links in to the soldier's HUD. It's small, but it's good for avoiding (or setting up) ambushes.

**Category: Cybernetics&trans-humanism**

**Implanted Replicators: **This is one of those things just about everyone has, as its just so insanely useful. An Implanted Replicator is typically in the forearm of the owner, and allows raw iridium that is carried around to be turned into tools or parts for various projects almost instantaneously. Implanted Replicators are wired into the recipient's nervous system, and are therefore thought activated. An Implanted Replicator also removes much of the need to eat, drink, breathe, or use the bathroom, as nutrients, water and oxygen are replicated from biological waste products and set up so the body can re-use them.

**Internal Impulse Drive: **This is another augmentation in the category of 'just too useful to pass up'. Located at the base of the spine, this impulse drive allows the recipient to fly (and has a fair bit of delta V in space). The 'turning' problem was solved using a system of smaller impulse drives which function as maneuvering thrusters.

**Gravity Manipulator Telekinesis: **This is a set of augmentations spaced throughout the recipient's entire body. It allows them to produce and manipulate artificial gravitational fields to move objects at range. A civilian grade set has a precise manipulation range of 12 meters, and a general manipulation range of 60 meters. A military set has 3 times the range, and enough power to crush someone into a short-lived singularity.

**Extracts:** An Extract is someone who has had their brain removed and placed in a life-support unit that can be transferred between various robotic bodies. Typically, an Extract wears a robotic duplicate or clone of their original body. Typical reasons for Extracting are usually either an extreme medical emergency or being a first-wave colonist who doesn't want to risk the potential loss of continuity that comes with uploading.

**Uploading: **Uploading is a development of Transporter technology, which was developed when someone realized that the Transporter was obviously capable of taking a _perfectly_ accurate snapshot of a human brain, and decided to see what would happen if they just de-materialized someone and then ran the 'snapshot' of their brain hooked up to a robot. This is a fairly common thing nowadays, with most people treating their organic body as an 'at home' thing, sort of like a swimsuit.

**Category: Human ship classes (military)**

please note that all warp-capable human ships have at least one backup set of warp nacelles, both the primary and backup are retractable.

**Wedge class shuttle/fighter-bomber  
****Length: 6 meters  
Width: 3 meters  
Height: 2 meters  
Delta V: 60,000 km/s  
Acceleration: 7 km/s/s  
Top Speed in atmosphere: mach 21  
Armor: 20 centimeters AC194  
Shields: 2-layer CLS array  
Armament: 2 Conversion Cannons, 28 TCOs  
Passenger capacity: 7 (including pilot)**

**Void Skimmer Scout/Frigate  
****Length: 80 meters  
****Diameter: 20 meters  
****Delta V: 385,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
****Acceleration: 15 km/s/s (reactionless)  
****Warp Speed: 3,200 c  
****Warp Endurance: 48 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
****Armor: 3 meters AC194  
****Shields: 4-layer CLS array  
****Armament: 12 PD Converters, 6 STS Converters, 1 STS Torpedo Launch Railgun  
****Ammunition: 120,000 PD Convertor Mass Cartridges, 2,400 STS Convertor Mass Cartridges, 35 STS Torpedoes.  
****Auxiliary craft: 4 Wedge class shuttles**

**NX Class cruiser  
****Length: 300 meters  
****Diameter: 80 meters  
****Delta V: 280,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
****Acceleration: 10 km/s/s (reactionless)  
****Warp Speed: 2,000 c  
****Warp Endurance: 30 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
****Armor: 15 meters AC194 (with regenerative replicator systems)  
****Shields: 12-layer CLS array  
****Armament: 36 PD Convertors, 16 STS Convertors, 4 STS Torpedo Launch Railguns  
****Ammunition: 360,000 PD Converter Mass Cartridges, 20,000 STS Convertor Mass Cartridges, 500 STS** **Torpedoes**  
**Auxiliary craft: 24 wedge class shuttles**

**Overzealous class dreadnought  
Length: 1 km  
Diameter: 275 meters  
Delta V: 315,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Acceleration: 8 km/s/s (reactionless)  
Warp Speed: 1,800 c  
Warp Endurance: 55 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Armor: 50 meters of AC194 (with regenerative replicator systems)  
Shields: 38-layer CLS array  
Armament: 200 PD Convertors, 72 STS Convertors, 4 Heavy STS Convertors, 18 STS Torpedo Launch Railguns  
Ammunition:10,000,000 PD Convertor Mass Cartridges, 80,000 STS Convertor Mass Cartridges, 1,600 Heavy STS Convertor Mass Cartridges, 3,600 STS Torpedoes.  
Auxiliary Craft: 120 wedge class shuttles**

**Whale Class troop transport/dropship  
Length: 120 meters  
Diameter: 80 meters  
Delta V: 120,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Acceleration: 4 km/s/s (reactionless)  
Top Speed in atmosphere: Mach 18.4  
Warp Speed: 1,800 c  
Warp Endurance: 28 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Armor: 5 meters AC194  
Shields: 8-layer CLS array.  
Armament: 60 Conversion Autocannons, 20 Conversion Cannons, 8 PD Convertors, 2,000 TCOs, 2 STS Convertors  
Ammunition: 30,000 Conversion Autocannon ammo blocks, 10,000 Conversion Cannon ammo blocks, 16,000 PD Convertor Mass Cartridges, 500 STS Convertor Mass Cartridges  
Auxiliary Craft: 32 wedge class shuttles, 20 Overkill MBTs, 80 Doomsday IFVs  
Passenger Capacity: 380**

**Category: human ship classes (civilian)  
**

**Boeing-898 cargo shuttle  
Length: 48 meters  
Width: 12 meters  
height: 8 meters  
Delta V: 45,000 km/s  
Acceleration: 2.5 km/s/s (reactionless)  
Top Speed in Atmosphere: mach 12  
Passenger capacity: 175  
**

**Vista class cargo ship  
Length: 750 meters  
width: 150 meters  
height: 100 meters  
Delta V: 400,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Acceleration: 3 km/s/s (reactionless)  
Warp speed: 1,750 c  
Warp Endurance: 80 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Auxiliary craft: 24 Boeing-898 cargo shuttles  
Passenger Capacity: 320,000 (if not carrying cargo)  
**

**Grunt class mining/construction ship  
Length: 500 meters  
diameter: 120 meters  
Delta V: 325,000 km/s (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Acceleration: 1.8 km/s/s (reactionless)  
Warp Speed: 1,500 c  
Warp Endurance: 120 days (not accounting for mass scoops)  
Auxiliary craft: 8 Boeing-898 cargo shuttles  
Passenger Capacity: 12,000  
Maximum mass/energy converted per second: 320,000 tons (replicator)**

**Category: human ground vehicles (military)  
**

**Doomsday IFV  
****Length: 10 meters  
Width: 4 meters  
Height: 3 meters  
Top Speed: 280 km/h (without activating jump-jets)  
Armor: 10 centimeters AC194  
Shields: 3-layer CLS array  
Armament: 1 Conversion Autocannon, 8 TCOs, 2 Conversion Carbines (1 co-axial, 1 in a foreward sponson)  
Passenger Capacity: 8 (not counting the 3-person crew)  
**

**Overkill MBT  
Length: 15 meters  
width: 5 meters  
height: 4.5 meters  
Top Speed: 225 km/h  
Armor: 30 centimeters AC194  
Shields: 4-layer CLS array  
Armament: 2 Conversion Cannons (double-barrel configuration), 12 TCOs, 5 Conversion Carbines (1 in a CROWs on top of the turret, 2 co-axial, 1 in each side-sponson)  
**

* * *

Deep Space Asset: Tartarus (I just keep using this rogue planet as somewhere out of the way).

* * *

Cheryl Madi was one of the 1st warp-generation colonists to leave the sol system (which now sported roughly 2,000 300 meter scale ship factories and 250 1 km scale ones). she was assisting in the construction of a Bishop Ring out near a rogue gas giant. Several moons had already been completely disassembled for raw matter. The interesting thing about Cheryl however, was the fact that she didn't need a spacesuit while working in vacuum. This was due to her being an Extract. As Cheryl finished off her shift overseeing the construction of ANOTHER section of mega-replicator, she marveled that just 6 months ago, this massive project had been a mere theoretical concept, and was now roughly 40% completed. As she gloried in the light of the conversion reactor that would function as the sun for this place when it was done, she activated her internal impulse drive and left the job site for home.

Ever since mass/energy conversion had been developed, humanity (or transhumanity as some people were starting to call it) had basically been a post-scarcity economy. Some big and complicated things couldn't be replicated all in one go for sure, but the parts usually could. And, replicators meant that any matter was more or less inter-changable as a resource. Cheryl was currently exploiting this to make a very specific sort of toy, but we won't be going into that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** So, I was thinking, and I realized that I need to focus on a specific set of characters if I want this story to be interesting. I guess the Enterprise is sticking around for a while. This is immediately after the pacification of the Klingons (cultural assimilation underway).

Also: alternate prime directive: Any pre-commercialized spaceflight civilization is to be manipulated to both reach space in a much shorter period of time than usual, and be amiable to the idea of joining the Federation when they do. Until then, said species is to be protected from extinction, be it from nuclear holocaust, asteroid, or alien interference.

* * *

John Archer had been ordered to do 2 things.  
1: explore space within 200 light years of Sol.  
2: mark any sites the Federation might find interesting with subspace transmitter buoys, and defend them until a task force can be diverted for the task.

As his first flight, he had decided to go take a peek at some system that had been determined to have a Class M planet via telescope a few decades ago. Technically, it was outside of his allotted exploration area, but John wanted to see if he could make 1st contact on his first stop. As John exited warp, he immediately noted (thanks to the improved reaction time that came with being uploaded) that there was a large amount of starship traffic in this system. Fortunately for him, he was on the outer edge of the system and away from the plane of ecliptic. Therefore, he was not the subject of weapons fire, and he took advantage of this to transmit a "We come in peace, please don't shoot" message as the Warp Nacelles retracted.

Considering he had just blundered into the capital system of the Romulan Star Empire, John got very lucky, as he recieved a return transmission rather than a plasma torpedo. It went like this "Unidentified Craft, state your class, designation, mission, polity of origin, and home system in that order."

John glady replied with "NX class cruiser, Designation: Enterprise, Mission: Exploration, Polity of origin: United Transhumanity, Home System: Sol."

"Understood, a diplomatic shuttle will be sent up to make contact."

"Affirmative, we shall open the shuttle bay when your shuttle closes to within visual range."

~3 hours later~

Jhu Mas nervously felt her concealed disruptor pistol as the shuttle docked. Her 4 bodyguards (with ablative armor vests and disruptor rifles) were similarly disconcerted. As they exited into the shuttle bay (which was buried under 8 meters of armor for whatever reason) they noted that the shuttles used by United Transhumanity were armed with a set of missile racks and a pair of extremely large energy weapons under the nose. As Jhu took that in, she started forming an opinion that this species was either extremely aggressive or had been forced to defend themselves from another species that was. Then Jhu received a greeting from what appeared to be some variant of combat android, carrying a quite formidable looking rifle-like weapon of some sort.

As Jhu's entourage was escorted to what they sincerely hoped was a diplomatic chamber, one of her bodyguards asked a question, namely "Why would you need such formidable combat capabilities if you don't want to subjugate or exterminate all other known races!?"

He got an unexpected reply of "Believe it or not, we only managed to crack FTL a few months ago. The reason for all this militarization was that we came to the conclusion that it would be safer to vastly overestimate the general hostility of the universe than it would be to underestimate it."

With that brief Q&A session over, they arrived at a device Jhu guessed was probably a turbolift. As they entered it and the door was closed, there was a brief flash of light almost like being transported, and then everything went wire-frame for a few seconds before it rendered. Jhu was trying to figure out what that had meant when a voice echoed through her mind saying "welcome to synthetic existence, new user". Judging by the confused looks of her bodyguards, Jhu guessed they had heard it too. She had enough of this and asked "WHAT WAS THAT!? I know what using a transporter is like and it isn't like that!"

Her guide (who now looked like a red-haired male humanoid of some sort) replied with "Our mind-patterns were transferred to a computer system, which also functions as the crew quarters for most of the crew and allows the Bridge to have a faster reaction time than if they were in their organic bodies. Follow me, we're almost to the negotiation chamber. Curiously, you make it sound almost like you have transporters without having uploading. How did you miss that?"

Jhu panicked and responded "we need to get out of this computer NOW!"

"Why?"

"Because, my superiors were watching the feed from a life-sign monitor in my vest! They probably think you people killed us, and they're probably sending a group of warbirds up to take you down right now!"

"I'm glad then, that only 32 real-time milliseconds have passed, let's download."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** I've decided that until we have to deal with one of the big bads that could actually present a threat to the _intelligent _Federation (and those copying them), I'll just stick to a 'highlights reel'. Some of you may remember the Repair Station from Star Trek: Enterprise, I was thinking of doing something with that and wondered "What would happen if the Borg showed up while the Enterprise was investigating it? What if the Borg BUILT IT!?" This Enterprise is highly unlikely to actually need the place however, as it has that repairs-itself-almost-instantly system as standard. And thus Hilarity (and Beam Spam) ensued.

* * *

The Enterprise dropped out of Warp after its run-in with an entire Orion colonization fleet (they had offended the Orion, who had opened fire with an absolute barrage of phase cannon and torpedo fire). The damage had been repaired within minutes of going to warp, but John had decided to simply mark that system for a pacification fleet to go to. As the initial sensor reports came back, John's officer noted what appeared to be a somewhat large space station with 2 docking bays. Going to warp at 20 c, the Enterprise made a quick in-system hop to the station in question, before making an extremely high-resolution scan, including several hacking attempts.

Then the station fired off a subspace transmission to somewhere unknown. Attempts to decipher the transmission were undertaken, but a few minutes into the attempt a massive cubical starship entered the system through what was apparently a traversable wormhole. The Enterprise attempted to initiate diplomatic contact, but all they got was an audio transmission of "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Shifting to combat mode, the Enterprise spent roughly 3 seconds to warp out to their maximum engagement range of 12 light seconds, before opening up with their 8 rear STS Converters. This was sufficient to defeat the 20-layer shields at the targeted location and blast quite deeply into the Borg ship's hull. As the Borg Cube closed to 6,000 km, the Enterprise lined up all 4 of its STSCT Launch Railguns and fired. The torpedoes each had a yield of roughly 160 gigatons, 4 of them fired together had a yield of 640 gigatons. This was sufficient to utterly obliterate the Borg Cube in a way that not even their ability to adapt could compensate for, especially given that the torpedoes had flown into the aforementioned breach created by the STS Convertors.

However, that was when 8 more Borg Cubes exited the wormhole. The Borg had optimized their shields against the extremely high-energy electromagnetic beam weaponry that this relatively puny ship was flying around with. Still, only so much could be done against a weapon that worked through plain old brute force rather than any fancy atom-disintegrating tricks. As they closed to firing range, they rammed straight into a barrage of that energy beam weapon that had been fired on their predicted trajectory. It had all been focused on a single Cube, barely defeating its shields at a single point. That was when the expected barrage of STSCTs arrived, 3 of which were successfully shot down. However this was still sufficient to put the Cube in question out of commission for the rest of the fight.

Then the Borg ships fired disruptors. This was sufficient to cause noticeable damage to the Enterprise, but that was repaired in seconds (at the cost of a large quantity of fuel). Then John drew his trump card. He had, until this point, only been allowing each STS Convertor to fire once every 3 seconds to mislead the Borg about how they worked. Now he aligned the Enterprise perpendicularly to the Borg battle group and ordered it to spin once every 0.3 seconds. The new auto-loaders took EXACTLY that long to load a new Mass Cartridge. This means that the Enterprise suddenly went from cranking out a pitiful 10 gigatons per second to almost 100, with the odd STSCT thrown in for extra boom. Adding PD Convertors into the mix threw in an extra 48.6 gigatons per second. This totaled out to 304.6 gigatons per second of hurt. Within 4 seconds that many Borg Cubes were utterly removed from existence, and the remainder, to quote Monty Python "Bravely Ran Away!"

* * *

Borg POV

* * *

The Collective was... terrified. A ship roughly 300 meters long had arrived at Research Station 09 and had attempted to hack it. That was fairly normal. The ship in question had attempted diplomatic non-assimilating contact with the Cube sent to investigate. That was also fairly normal (if a bit naive). The ship had destroyed the cube all on its own, which had warranted investigation. The ship in question had singlehandedly demolished 4 additional Cubes at a rate of 1 every second, even after the shields had been optimised against their electromagnetic beam weaponry and self-repaired within seconds of taking any damage. That was terrifying.

The Collective considered what to do in the face of this nightmarishly powerful threat, and came to the conclusion that they must be prevented from reverse-engineering Transwarp at ANY cost. Also, those energy beams and ridiculously powerful torpedoes needed to be assimilated ASAP. A mission was launched to scuttle the disabled Cube...


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **As you can clearly see, this federation is likely to cause some utterly insane things to happen in terms of firepower. The Enterprise pulling that 'death roll' last chapter was something that happened by me simply wanting to see how much stomp Conversion Beams make a ship capable of. I'm fairly certain that could have taken an ISD down in fairly short order, though the ISD has a better FTL drive. And there are more ISDs. A lot more.

Also, I'm writing fan-fiction so I can get good enough at writing to do it professionally. If I don't get reviews, I'm basically working in a vacuum and I don't get any better at it.

Lastly, the Enterprise era will come to an end around chapter 10. (I've already got ideas for new tech they can use in the 23rd century...) If I keep going the rate I'm going now that might be tomorrow...

* * *

Federation R&D

* * *

"So, what can you make of the Borg's FTL drive?"

"You are aware that our Warp Engines work using principles originally worked out by Miguel Alcubierre in the late 20th century, correct?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"As far as I can tell, the Borg's FTL drive also uses that. However, it also creates a sort of... tube of space ahead of itself that both reduces the distance it needs to travel by roughly 800 times in addition to making it so that the Borg ship doesn't interact with objects in normal space."

"So, assuming a 2,000 c warp component to the drive that's... 1,600,000 c. Which comes out at... a bit above 1 lightyear every 20 seconds."

"Yes, however, bear in mind that was for a version we could theoretically fabricate with our current technology base. The Borg version is much faster, at around 30,000,000 c, or a bit under 1 light year per second."

"Why aren't the Borg an intergalactic power yet?"

"As far as we can tell, they aren't actually all that interested in expansionism, they're more like the universe's most horrifying art collectors."

"And we have a technology base they find very _interesting_."

"Well, that's not good is it?"

"It's a mixed blessing."

* * *

And now for this chapter's action scene!

* * *

John Archer had been reassigned. He had once been on exploration duty, but now he was part of the new Borg Suppression Task Force. He no longer commanded the Enterprise, but an Overzealous class dreadnought named **_Pre-emptive__ measures_**. Considering that their current job was to smash up the Transwarp Hub closest to Sol, which had an exit WITHIN 1 LIGHT YEAR OF EARTH, the name was VERY applicable. As they entered the Transwarp conduit, the task force of 200 Overzealous class Dreadnoughts, 1,800 NX class cruisers, and 1,000 Void Skimmer class scouts/frigates retracted their warp nacelles. Then they ran into a group of 320 Borg Cubes going the other way. Thusly, one of the most FUBAR battles in Federation (and Borg, for that matter) history took place inside a Transwarp Conduit.

The _**Pre-emptive**** Measures**_ started the engagement off with a shot from a Heavy STS Converter, coring the foremost Borg Cube and depleting the shields of the one behind it. The Borg responded by launching spheres, which fired Heavy Antimatter Torpedoes (HATs) with a 40 gigaton yield each. This severely damaged the **_Pre-emptive__ Measures_ **and 4 other Overzealous class dreadnoughts. Then John got a stupidly dangerous idea. As soon as his ship had self-repaired, he informed all Federation personnel to update their remote backups, then he ordered his cargo transporter to convert the ENTIRE wrecked Borg Cube into energy. Assuming a Borg cube is 3 km on an edge and has an average density of 5 tons/cubic meter, that means it has a mass of 135 billion tons. Taking off 50 billion tons for this one being cored still puts it at 85 billion tons. This meant that the resulting blast had a yield of 1,700 exatons of TNT. This was sufficient to not only instantly vaporize all forces currently engaged in the fight within the Transwarp conduit, but to destroy the conduit itself.

* * *

Later, at the court martial

* * *

John Archer (restored from backup), sighed. That maneuver HAD technically allowed the mission to succeed, but it had also led to several million Federation personnel needing to be restored from backup in addition to destroying assets that put the Federation's ship count back by roughly a week of constant manufacturing.

The Judge began "State your name and rank."

"John Archer, Captain of the now-defunct _**Pre-emptive measures**_."

"It says here that you ordered an action that irrevocably destroyed several billion tons of UHCF property."

"That I did, sir."

"Please state your justification."

"The battle was starting to go downhill, they were deploying weapons capable of causing significant damage to an Overzealous class dreadnought, and quite likely able to outright destroy an NX class cruiser. If they won, they would have a force within 1 light year of Earth, and in perfect position to cause horrendous damage to the Federation's capitol. I took the opportunity to both possibly achieve my objective of destroying the Transwarp conduit and prevent the Borg from attacking Earth."

"We note that immediately before initiating this massive explosion, you outright ORDERED everyone in the task force to update their remote backups. This adds 1 count of insubordination to your crimes, as well as indicating that you knew performing this action would lead to the destruction of several billion tons of Federation property."

"That is the case, however, if I hadn't done that the Borg could have possibly won. In addition, would any of the restored personnel have preferred to lose existence entirely?"

~some time later (as I have no idea how a court martial is supposed to go)~

"You are hereby declared GUILTY, and are assigned as 1st officer of a Void Skimmer."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** I'm still trying to figure out how chapter 2 not only got more views, but more _visitors_ than chapter 1. Don't people have to go through chapter 1 to get to chapter 2? In other news the Void Skimmer John Archer got assigned to is named the **Punctuality****. **Also, a teeny bit more exposition.

I just realized something terrifying. This Federation has RTS level manufacturing, except they don't need resource nodes. And every unit is also a builder unit.

* * *

**Federation Economics:** As the development of the Replicator more-or-less made all matter, equipment, and energy inter-changable, it also rendered conventional currencies worthless. Thus the Federation uses a 'matter economy', with the kilogram being the standard unit of wealth. Worth noting is that a license or similar authorization is still required for a replicator to produce a firearm or just flat out convert matter to energy. Everyone is provided a certain amount of matter by the government based on what service they provide the Federation (list of pay rates below), in 25 gram iridium slugs. In addition, citizens may supplement their income by providing a service to others and charging a certain amount of matter for it (though they had better make sure the service they offer is something not just _anyone_ can do before starting if they want to avoid getting laughed at).  
**Pay Rates  
**-Freeloader: 1 kg per day  
-Miner/mass extractor: 1% of yield (evaluated at end of week)  
-Civilian ship hand/low level transport driver: 4 kg per day  
-Civilian ship officer: 6 kg per day  
-Civilian ship captain: 12 kg per day  
-Street/desk level Police work: 4 kg per day  
-Detective: 6 kg per day  
-Police Commissioner: 12 kg per day  
-Researcher: 10 kg per day  
-Research Director: 15 kg per day  
-Designer (makes new designs to feed into the replicators): 12 kg per day  
-Grunt-level military service (trooper or ship hand): 6 kg per day, paid at end of tour of duty  
-Low-level officer military service: 8 kg per day, paid at end of tour of duty  
-Mid-level officer military service (I.E. Major or Captain): 12 kg per day, paid at end of tour of duty  
-High-level officer military service (admiral, general, that sort of thing): 18 kg per day, paid at end of tour of duty  
-street-level government official (civil engineer, IRS agent, health inspector, etc.): 5 kg per day  
-mid-level bureaucrat: 8 kg per day  
-local governor: 25 kg per day  
-habitat/planetary governor: 35 kg per day  
-system governor: 50 kg per day  
-star cluster governor: 100 kg per day

* * *

John Archer groaned as the **Punctuality** left the replicator that had just manufactured it exactly 5 minutes behind schedule. They were launching from Tau Ceti, which was a well-developed core system by now. Their ship was equipped with an experimental Transwarp drive (effective velocity of 100 light years per day), the basic principles of which had been provided so thoughtfully by the Borg. Their destination was the galaxy's core, which John suspected was at least partially to get him out of the way for about a year and a half.

They departed immediately.

* * *

1st stop: somewhere I can't be bothered to name (1,200 light years from home)(48,200 light years to go)

* * *

As the **Punctuality** exited Transwarp on the outer edge of the system, they came across a Class L planet. It was a rather cold place with a brisk average surface temperature of 9.3 degrees centigrade and an atmosphere that could be easily breathable if one were wearing a simple breathing filter. As they were about to simply mark the planet for later consumption, the spectrometer detected faint traces of industrial pollutants. On closer inspection (a quick in-system warp to 1.5 light seconds of range) it was determined that the planet had inhabitants that were just entering the information age.

Even closer inspection revealed the presence of large numbers of nuclear missile silos, and what appeared to be military satelites (some of which were weaponized). In total, it was fairly obvious that this world was on its way to a nuclear war. Dirk Vanlith, captain of the **Punctuality**, would be having none of that. Internal conflicts were mostly the affairs of the species in question, but that went out the window when extinction was a serious possibility. A plan was concocted. 1 'bouncy ball' set to nuke mode would be transported to each nuclear silo and weapon satellite the natives had, and they would all be activated at once. But first they had to make sure that they had found them all.

This meant that 2 ground operations had to be undertaken, 1 for each superpower, to get intel on the locations of things such as well-camouflaged nuclear silos.

* * *

Ground operations

Rules: each team consists of 10 troopers, 6 generalists and 4 specialists. The specialists are the Heavy who carries the big honking kill everything gun, the Poltergeist with a quieter suit, optical cloak and high-performance gravity manipulation augs, the field engineer with a high-capacity personal replicator/mass harvester, and the officer who keeps everyone organized.

There are 6 relevant stats, strength, finesse, endurance, speed, intelligence, and intuition. When a team member goes down, who that is gets randomly rolled for, and has an 85% chance of getting right back up thanks to the suit's auto-med system. stats go: low, average, high, very high,incredibly high, extremely high, insanely high. No-one with a low stat made the cut (or they just got augmented until that wasn't a problem anymore). As long as their suit's exoskeleton is still functioning, all physical stats (strength, endurance, finesse, and speed) are treated as extremely high. Every soldier was randomly generated. The teams are being inserted via stealth drop pod (replicated on site) and extracting via transporter. Please bear in mind that these are simultaneous operations.

Team #1 (dropping into the Herate Empire)  
1: Str: very high/End: very high/Fin: average/spd: average/intel: average/intu: average/ gender: F/ name: Terica Carrick  
2: Str: high/ End: high/Fin: very high/Spd: average/intel: high/Intu: high/gender: M/name: Darwin Ducote  
3: Str: average/End: high/Fin: high/Spd: average/intel: average/intu: very high/gender: F/Name: Bryanna Centrich  
4: Str: high/End: high/Fin: very high/Spd: average/intel: very high/intu: high/gender: F/Name: Rosette Vilchis  
5: Str: very high/End: average/Fin: very high/Spd: very high/intel: average/intu: very high/gender: F/Name: Keva Galven  
6: Str: average/End: very high/Fin: average/Spd: very high/intel: high/intu: average/gender: M/Name: Issac Malik  
Heavy: Str: high/End: high/Fin: very high/Spd: average/intel: average/intu: high/gender: M/Name: Elvin Veillon  
Poltergeist: Str: average/End: high/Fin: very high/Spd: high/intel: very high/intu: high/gender: F/Name: Ai Engstrom  
Field Engineer: Str: high/End: average/Fin: high/Spd: high/intel: high/intu: high/gender: F/Name: Jennel Steward  
Officer: Str: very high/End: high/Fin: average/Spd: very high/intel: high/intu: high/gender: M/Name: Dillon Grippen

Team #2 (dropping into the Belshen Dominions)  
1: Str: average/End: average/Fin: high/Spd: very high/Intel: very high/Intu: high/Gender: M/Name: Elvin Burcham  
2: Str: high/End: very high/Fin: average/Spd: high/Intel: very high/Intu: average/Gender: M/Name: Hank Wynn  
3: Str: very high/End: average/Fin: average/Spd: high/Intel: average/Intu: average/Gender: M/Name: Darius Askvig  
4: Str: high/End: average/Fin: average/Spd: high/Intel: average/Intu: high/Gender: M/Name: Damien Castiglione  
5: Str: average/End: average/Fin: very high/Spd: high/Intel: average/Intu: high/Gender: M/Name: Weldon Lockley  
6: Str: average/End: average/Fin: average/Spd: very high/Intel: average/Intu: average/Gender: M/Name: Darron Sonoda  
Heavy: Str: high/End: high/Fin: high/Spd: average/Intel: very high/Intu: average/Gender: M/Name: Walton Avant  
Poltergeist: Str: very high/End: average/Fin: high/Spd: high/Intel: very high/Intu: high/Gender: M/Name: Arlen Nicolau  
Field Engineer: Str: high/End: high/Fin: high/Spd: very high/Intel: high/Intu: average/Gender: M/Name: Linwood Grippen  
Officer: Str: average/End: high/Fin: very high/Spd: average/Intel: high/Intu: high/Gender: F/Name: Jennifer Shepard

* * *

Operation 1 (Herate Empire IntCom) (note: This is in the style of a report from one of the survivors)

I was a janitor. Yes, you heard me, I was a janitor. I was just finishing mopping up some [vomit] in the radar tower, when I see this _massive_ fireball streaking towards the ground. So, like anyone with a working sense of self-preservation, I ducked behind the nearest sizable cover, which happened to be the radar's computer. Then I hear this huge CRASH noise and look through the window.

That was no meteorite, no matter what they try to tell me. It was a cylinder of some blackish metal, roughly [3 meters] in diameter and [6 meters] tall. Then, as the guards come up to it, a hole sort of... melts open in the side and a group of vaguely [humanoid] things that were probably robots comes out, guns blazing. When they shot at us, it was a one-hit kill, but the aliens had some sort of barrier to deflect our bullets that visibly flared up when we shot it. Eventually, Gertuyi managed to take down one of the regular ones with one of those mini-nuke launchers, but when the rest saw that he went down in less than a [second]. I'm so glad it came down roughly 2 km away from IntCom.

You ask what I meant by the regular ones? Oh, there were about 3 ones that could do... really weird [S***], even accounting for the infinite ammo anti-tank rayguns they used for assault rifles. The first type was the most straightforward, it just had these 2 massive shoulder 'cannons' and was much more bulky than the rest at about 3 meters tall. One shot from those things must have hit with the force of several tons of high explosive. And each one fired 6 times every [second]. I call that type the beast, and the other survivors agree with me that was an appropriate term for them.

Now, we never actually saw the next type. But it was probably there. You see about halfway through that desperate delaying action, rocks and such started levitating off the ground before launching themselves towards people at hyper-sonic velocities. When they shot at where those rocks were, they hit empty air. The scariest thing that one did was when we managed to get one of the new nuclear MBTs on the scene. One [second] it was there, the area it was in went entirely black for the briefest of periods, and then it was just... gone. The only real conclusive evidence we have that one even existed is that eventually one of the guys with an automatic shotgun traversed his gun around while doing a mag dump, and about halfway through an apparently empty spot flares up like one of those alien's shields do when hit. We nicknamed that type... or possibly phenomena the wraith.

This next one is what really freaked me out, if only because I actually got within 2 meters of it. It was about the same size as a regular one, except it had this large backpack thing it wore around. It came up from below ground inside the base. I heard some gunfire and some weird fizz around the corner, and then the shooting suddenly stopped. I looked around the corner, and I saw this tunnel sloping down in the wall lined with gleaming metal. I followed the noises and trail of matter that had been ripped from the walls, floor and ceiling, and I showed up behind that monstrosity as it was storming a barricade. Not by itself though, it was hanging back, and it was taking things apart near it, _changing_ the matter and using that to build floating spherical combat drones it was sending at the defenses. The drones apparently lacked a barrier, as they were being gunned down in fairly short order.

That... thing apparently got tired of waiting for the defenders to run out of ammunition, so it produced a little red ball in much the same way as it did the drones and threw it. As it turned out, that little red ball was a horrifically powerful hand grenade. The... thing continued into the carnage it created, and it F***ing GREW floor for it to walk on as it crossed the hole in the floor it had caused. I took one of the downed combat drones with me as i continued. It had a hole in its casing, through which I could see a sheared wire emitting sparks. I didn't know what would happen if it made contact with somewhere it wasn't supposed to go, but I had a hunch it wouldn't be good. As I continued following that monstrosity, I watched as it disintegrated one of my friends and used her for raw matter to build another batch of combat drones.

That was when I lost it. I ran up behind this death machine, and jammed that wire around in my appropriated combat drone, which yielded a slight fizzing noise. The monster whirled around and shot me with some sort of dart before grabbing that thing and throwing it as far as it possibly could. As it flew, the monster disintegrated stuff around its flight path while at the same time layering on as much of some super-dense alloy as it could. That drone must have been buried under 8 meters of material by the time it went off, and it still popped that casing like a [water balloon]. I passed out from whatever was in that dart shortly after. You're wondering what I call that type? Let's call it the alchemist.

-Jerged, janitor (retired)

* * *

Operation 2 (Belshen NLA)

As we dropped in, we decided to go for a tunnel insertion. To facilitate this we came in slow enough to avoid the normal fireball, and landed in the forest 28 km away. Exographic sensors and the ability to tunnel with almost no restrictions meant Arlen more-or less just slipped in when they weren't looking, grabbed the intel, and beamed out before they ever knew we were there. We decided to leave the tunnel behind and well-lit though just to troll the natives a bit though.

* * *

~A few minutes later, back in space~

"Lieutenant Dillon, I'm trying to figure out how the squad with fewer guys on it somehow acted more pointlessly violent than the team with only one woman."

"What, we got the intel!"

"At the same time, your decision directly caused the unnecessary deaths of over 125 natives, who I would like you to remember did not have the option of continuously updating a remote backup of themselves."

"But why do they matter!?"

"I would like to remind you that the entire purpose of this operation was to prevent a nuclear war by sabotaging their nuclear arsenals, NOT to stroke your already huge ego."

"Huh?"

"Consider yourself demoted to Grunt, and you will perform the next ground operation with no equipment or augmentations besides a conversion pistol with only 400 shots left, a dress uniform, and a communicator. On planets besides Class M you will be provided with the bare minimum life support equipment to function in that specific environment."

* * *

"Shepard, considering your extremely low-casualty performance on that last mission, would you like to do the honors of destroying all of their WMDs?"

"Certainly."

* * *

Dirk considered what to do to fulfill the Prime Directive and help boost the natives of this planet to the stars without just giving it to them on a silver platter. He supposed he could give each power bloc an orbital plate made by some seed replicators launched to the planet's surface to start out with.

* * *

**Orbital Plate****:** An orbital plate is a sort of habitat that blurs the line between a Space Elevator and an extra subcontinent. An orbital plate is a hexagon 600 km on a side with walls 225 km tall. The top is covered with a specialized force field to prevent what little air loss the walls don't deal with but allowing spacecraft to pass through. An Orbital Plate is anchored to its planet by extremely heavy duty space elevator systems at the corners, center, and other such points. Inside an Orbital Plate are 935,000 square kilometers of usable land (though some portion of that is covered in bodies of water). Typically, an Orbital Plate is just a teensy bit further out than geosynchronous orbit, and the extra tension leads to centrifugal force simulating gravity fairly well without any power-hogging gravity manipulators. In Federation space, a planet typically has such a large number of orbital plates around it that they eventually get joined together into a solid ring out of convenience.


End file.
